The Scarlet Letters

22 Sept 2026

So...maybe some big news coming to The Rubric soon. Fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I've stopped some on updating the site while I reconsidered what I was doing. I had originally envisioned it as a regular wiki, but it seems I misjudged the willingness of the average person to pitch in. I kind of thought there would be a handful--say 6-10 people--who would be interested in helping.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

I also thought that I would fill it out with the base information from the site, at least initially, as I thought that was what a wiki would be.

Again--wrong.

However, true to form, I summoned all my powers as a mediocre white man and forged ahead, undaunted. I have been formulating an evil plan to save the world. I've been thinking about putting in things that would actually be useful, even if they are not necessarily known to be true (because I can only know so much without inside information). As an example, my demystifying of Red Quill--largely correct, but probably off a little bit. Certainly close enough for the average user. Likewise, maybe a page explaining some of the most common things (like the poorly named "Story Share Code") and questions from the subreddit/chat. You know--the actually useful shit that people need instead of rehashing the obvious. We'll see what happens this week, but either way I will probably be doing that. The tide doesn't conquer the cliff face by crashing through it. It does it bit by bit, slowly, steadily, ceaselessly...

25 Aug 2026

For some time I've felt that Red Quill needed a URL shortener, because those links are a touch unwieldy. I mean... https://www.redquill.net/story/bqa941-zen-and-the-art-of-relationship-maintenance Get the heck out of here with that nonsense!

So with a little help from my friends, I have added a URL Shortener to The Rubric, the Penknife. It is limited to only creating links to the wiki or to Red Quill, so I don't have to worry about some loony using it for spam and scams and stuff. I'm a little frightened of turning the r/redquill community loose on it. There are a lot of users on Red Quill. Even if they are only a few bytes each, 30,000,000 links is not an insignificant issue. So far, though, it's been used....3 times. By me. :|

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, though. There are old pilots and bold pilots....

04 Aug 2026

Welcome to The Scarlet Letters, the blog of The Rubric. My name (for here, anyway) is The Dented Pen, but you can call me Denty, or Pendy, or Your Holiness. Well, maybe not the last one.

There was not an adequate wiki out there for Red Quill, and the community was hungering for one. Users were constantly asking questions in chat and in the subreddit that weren't explained on the site, and they didn't have anywhere to turn. Because of the nature of the site, and subsequently the wiki, normal wiki options like Fandom and Miraheze weren't really available to us. Like Hester Prynne, I wasn't going to let a bunch of uptight Puritans stop me, so I just made one myself. And this is that wiki.

It's just little ole me manning the Scriptorium right now, so information will be filled in slowly, but I am trying to concentrate on the FAQ and Tips pages to make as much useful information as possible available. If you'd like to help out, you can apply here.

Thanks for stopped by, and happy writing!

TDP.